


Forgotten Dreams

by AlyssAlenko



Series: Stolen Moments for Shoker [12]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Anger, Angst, Bad Jokes, Canon Dialogue, Collector Attack, EDI and Joker Friendship, Established Relationship, F/M, Grief, Implied Relationships, Kidnapping, Language, Loss, Love, Mild Language, Minor Violence, Soulmates, Unshackling EDI, Violence, Vrolik's Syndrome, blame, failure - Freeform, glimmer of hope, loss of the crew, reaper IFF, sci-fi classic references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-22 04:19:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9583295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlyssAlenko/pseuds/AlyssAlenko
Summary: Abigail has just left the Normandy while EDI and Joker are installing the Reaper IFF before they realize it's a trap, and the collectors take the whole crew out from under their noses. In an attempt to lose their attackers, Joker has to Unshackle the AI so they can get away with their lives.Follows the events exactly of the Collector attack, With some Shoker romance thrown into the mix. Was actually supposed to be a build-up to some smut, just didn't work quite the way I planned, smutty sequel to follow soon, though.





	

“I’m telling you, EDI, your readings are off. It’s radiation bleed, just white noise.”

Joker flipped through a half dozen screens on the terminal in front of him, not wanting to believe anything was wrong...he didn’t want to believe it was a trap. They’d rebuilt the Normandy, brought Abigail back, spent millions of credits on this endeavor—why would they endanger it all like that? That wasn’t even the worst part; he’d been trying to keep Abigail out of harm’s way and the biggest danger had been running the show all along...how had he not seen the signs? At least she was off on one last mission, if something was indeed going wrong. He readjusted in his chair and gripped the armrests, before tugging his hat off his head and replacing the garment, something he only did when he was frustrated.

“I have detected a signal embedded in the static. We are transmitting the Normandy’s location.” AI or not, if she wasn’t a program, he would’ve said EDI sounded frantic.

His eyes widened—a signal?

“Transmitting? To who?”

A heavy silence fell over the ship as a large ship appeared out of nowhere, directly on top of the Normandy. How a ship that large had found them so fast and with very little effort was beyond the realm of comprehension—it barely missed their flank as it pulled up alongside them, casting an eerily familiar shadow. He didn’t have time to dwell on the sense of déjà vu he felt—he was far too focused on the dread settling in the pit of his stomach. He needed to act quickly, so as not to lose another Normandy.

At least he didn’t have to lose another Shepard…

“Oh, shit.” He muttered under his breath.

It dwarfed the Normandy by at least ten times, as it hovered in the vacuum of space beside them, making no movements, but hell it was foreboding. There was a stampede of footsteps outside the bridge doors as the crew assumed their battle stations, Joker removed his hat and replaced it on his head before cracking his knuckles and returning his attention to his piloting, taking a deep breath to calm himself. They weren’t going to go down without a fight. His only job was going to be to get himself, the crew, and the ship out of that hellhole in one piece…he couldn’t wait for Shepard’s shuttle to return and that was tearing him apart. They had to leave.

“We’re getting out of here!” He cried.

“Propulsion systems are disabled. I’m detecting a virus in the ship’s computers.” EDI replied, as various crew members grabbed equipment, ready to defend the ship with their lives—he hoped it wouldn’t come to that…

“From the IFF? Damn it, why didn’t you scrub it?”

His readings were going haywire; something was trying to break through the garbage chute in Zaeed’s hangout in the starboard cargo hold—quite possibly the easiest entrance the collectors could have found onto the ship. There was a massive hole on that side, courtesy of their mysterious friends deciding on blowing a hole in their side for a boarding action. Several life signals congregated outside the doors, and the cameras offered an image of half a dozen crew members pointing guns at it with bated breath. Waiting for something…anything to come through, no matter what it was. They thought they were ready…

“Primary defense systems are offline. We can save the Normandy, Mr. Moreau, but you must help me. Give me the ship.”

Joker glanced over his shoulder at the bridge doors—they were still sealed tight.

“What? You’re crazy. You start singing “Daisy Bell” and I’m done.”

The last thing he needed was an unshackled AI and collectors on his tail…but he didn’t really have a choice—not with his legs being what they were; he should’ve taken Abigail’s advice and let Miranda infuse metal into his shin bones, insisting that if anything happened to her, he was her last line of defense. She didn’t press the issue, telling him she loved him the way he was, and if he didn’t feel the need for the operation, he shouldn’t do it. There was a chance he was going to die and here he was dwelling on the could haves and the should haves; his last thought should have been of his lover, like hers had been of him. His head fell back against his headrest and he took another deep breath to calm himself, promising this wasn’t going to turn into 2001: A Space Odyssey, as long as he drew air. The area around him dimmed, lights on the floor blinking red.

“Unlock my sealed databases, and I can initiate countermeasures. The maintenance shaft in the science lab will allow passage to the AI core. Main corridors are no longer safe. The Collectors have boarded.” EDI told him, and he hoisted himself out of his chair, hobbling towards the doors. “The emergency floor lighting will guide you, Mr. Moreau.”

“Ah, damn it.” He whispered.

The doors to the CIC slid open at his approach, lights blinking red underfoot, and veering off to the left around the galaxy map, where Abigail had stood less than an hour before. He couldn’t dwell on that now, as much as it would help to have his mind somewhere far away; somewhere tropical with her on his lap, blonde hair pulled over one shoulder. Something must be behind the door to the right, and Joker knew he wasn’t going that way as a random crew member—Goldstein, Shepard had called her—skittered in front of him towards the elevator in the center. He tried to scream stop, but it got stuck in his throat as the light on the door turned green and something came though, tearing the through the doorway and into the room.

“Shit, shit, shit.” Joker was almost singing in his nervousness.

“Oh my god! What is that?” Crewman Goldstein cried as the bug-like creature approached her.

Weapons discharged, buying Joker a little more time.

“We’ll hold it off as long as we can.” Crewman Hadley called to him, as the creature leapt across the gap between them and grabbed him. “Hurry, Joker! Go! You’re our only shot! Joker, go!”

Hadley’s scream echoed through the CIC as Joker ducked around the corner through the door to the lab EDI opened for him; he wasn’t entirely sure what was happening on the other side of the wall, and part of him didn’t want to know what the crew was being forced to endure to buy him some more time. A similar collector to the one that had attacked Crewmen Hadley and Goldstein floated past the window in the corner of the science lab—luckily, he was going down into the maintenance tunnel due right of said window, peering into the lab with four glowing blue eyes. So, all he had to do was crawl through the Air Duct, on bad legs that he could already feel breaking from all the stress, avoid detection from the Collectors and unshackle an AI…this was not going to end well. No pressure or anything.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.” He grumbled, limping over to the ladder and scaling it as fast as his stress-fractured legs would let him.

“Multiple hostiles detected on the crew deck.” EDI informed him.

Crewman Hawthorne beckoned him over with the gun he was holding. “Joker! This deck is crawling with those things! Stay close—I’ll protect you!”

It didn’t last long. As soon as they cleared the corner, Hawthorne was grabbed by another one of those floating collector bugs with four glowing blue eyes and thrown into the wall as Joker could only keep hobbling towards the medbay, ignoring the dread settling in his gut once more as Hawthorne’s scream ripped out of his throat as they found and grabbed Yeoman Chambers making her shrill scream pierce through the air. If he couldn’t save himself, he wasn’t going to live long enough to be able to help anyone else, and his need to see Abigail again kept pushing him forward; she would know what to do, and would stop at nothing to avenge, and or save everyone…she didn’t leave people behind.

That was his saving grace; his trump card.

“Shit, shit, shit!” Joker grumbled as they carted Kelly away.

It didn’t seem like they were killing—just incapacitating and capturing, though he didn’t have time to stand around and debate what sinister plot they had up their sleeves for the crew of the Normandy; the doors to the Medbay slid open in front of him. Joker damn near screamed with all the pain, tiredness, confusion, and trouble this damn IFF had caused; nothing was worth this, and Dr. Chakwas was nowhere to be found—his only other familiar face amidst all this Cerberus…they’d already taken her and something about that got to him. Why hadn’t he listened to EDI when she kept insisting something was wrong? He swore under his breath once more; he’d just called EDI ‘she’—not it, not this thing, not ship cancer…the situation must’ve finally been hitting him.

“Main fusion plant offline. Activating emergency H-fuel cells.”

“What the shit?” He took a deep breath when the medbay doors closed behind him, and he could get to the AI core with no trouble. “All right, I’m at, uh, you.”

“Connect the core to the Normandy’s primary control module.” EDI instructed.

If Abigail hadn’t enjoyed getting technical with equipment, all of this would’ve been white noise for him…he was a pilot; he didn’t know how to work AI hardware, but after they christened his chair, she’d read up on everything this new Normandy had to offer, happy to regale him with the information as he lay next to her in her bed up in the loft, naked. He pulled his hat off his head and replaced the garment before he punched a couple codes into the terminal that was glowing orange in front of him—lucky hat indeed. Why couldn’t this be easier?

“Great. See, this is where it starts, and when we’re all just organic batteries, guess who they’ll blame? ‘This is all Joker’s fault. What a tool he was. I have to spend all day computing pi because he plugged in the Overlord’.” He scrunched up his nose in distaste.

A brilliant blue light lit up the area, everything coming alive in the AI Core; EDI was free.

“Ah. I have access to the defensive systems. Thank you, Mr. Moreau. Now you must reactivate the primary drive in engineering.”

He frowned and tugged on his beard angrily; hadn’t he done enough? “Argh! You want me to go crawling through the ducts again.”

“I enjoy the sight of humans on their knees.”

Joker paused and raised an eyebrow at the AI—that was the kind of horrible joke Abigail would’ve made in that same deadpanned tone; he missed her so much.

“That is a joke.”

“Right.” He shook his head.

“The shaft behind you connects to the engineering deck. Good luck.”

He glanced around cautiously, before descending the ladder. He was seriously contemplating how many painkillers he could take at once without dying from an overdose, once again wondering why the issue of metal fused to his shin bones hadn’t been forced on him—he should’ve let it happen. Some last line of defense he’d been when push came to shove; he’d failed her, and that rankled. She’d told him to take care of the ship and the crew while she was away when they’d been installing the Reaper IFF, she’d trusted him to make sure nothing went wrong with the device and the installation and here they were. A large shadow passed over the staircase, and Joker huddled down below until it disappeared.

“Hostiles are present in engineering. They are heading towards the cargo bay.”

Joker slipped through a door huffing quietly, just behind a group of Collectors making their way towards the hole they’d entered, probably with Ken and Gabby—he’d liked them; they were hilarious, and Shepard could clean their clocks at Skyllian Five with barely any effort.

“Activate the drive and I will open the airlocks as we accelerate. All hostiles will be killed.”

Joker stopped pressing buttons. “What? What about the crew?”

“They are gone, Jeff. The Collectors took them.”

He shouldn’t have let EDI call him Jeff—that was Abigail’s right, but he was a tad preoccupied with the rest of her statement; everyone was gone? He was all that was left? He slammed his hands against the console in frustration—this was not the easy task he’d expected it to be and for that he was irritated as all hell, with no lover to get his mind off things, because she was off on some damn urgent mission. Damnit, when she got back, he was going to have a lot of anger and stress to work out with her. One job, and he couldn’t even do that right.

“Shit.” He growled, limping towards the drive core.

“I am sealing the engine room.” The Tantalus Drive Core whirred to life, pulsing blue with power as EDI integrated herself into the ship’s systems. “I have control.”

He fell back against the metal grates on the deck, as the Normandy took off at accelerated speeds, and felt his consciousness fading to black; he let it happen…after that whole fiasco he’d earned a damn rest. The ship disappeared into the void of space, leaving the collector ship sitting dead in space. They’d gotten what they were after, the entire crew of the Normandy for some nefarious plot no one had any insight into, and while it was regrettable, his solace was in the fact that Abigail wouldn’t let that stand and would bludgeon her way through to rescue their friends. She was a whirlwind when she wanted to be. He sat up with a groan when the ship decelerated, his muscles and his legs were searing with pain, and he put his head in his hands; he had a horrible feeling again, only this time not from fear, but from sorrow. Why did this seem so familiar...like a memory from a dream?

“Purge is complete. No other life forms on board. Securing airlocks and cargo bay doors.”

“Send a message to Shepard’s shuttle. Tell her what happened.” Joker grunted, standing up slowly and holding his stomach.

“Message away. Are you feeling well, Jeff?”

He rubbed his eyes and started to limp away. “No. But thanks for asking.”

There was only one person who could make this better, turn this whole nightmare into a forgotten dream, and she was on her way back…


End file.
